"What are your doing Ginger?"
"I could ask you the same thing Mary Ann?"
"I thought I would change it up a little. So I dressed up like a sophisticated whore who could still suck a golf ball through a garden hose."
"I thought I would dress up like you. You know a tease who still is DTF and has a cooch full of hay."
"I think we just transfer our sexuality. I wonder what they call that?"
"I think it is being a trans sexual."
"Well it is 1968 so I guess that will work."
"Groovy!"

I remember when there was a great civil rights protest over the police harassing and targeting an innocent group of citizens. They would roust them and stop and frisk them and even bug their telephones and cars. You couldn't have a wedding or a funeral where they wouldn't show up and take everyones photo and write down your license plate number.

So some of our community leaders got together and started to rabble rouse and get everyone agitated over this blatant police harassment and corruption. There were marches and protests and press releases and public rallies with thousands of people protesting the discriminatory practices of law enforcement.

Then Joe Colombo got shot.

You see it was really just a front. A bunch of criminals and their families and their enablers tried to game the system so they wouldn't be prosecuted. They tried to get the cops back on their heels and make them think twice about arresting them or harassing them even when they caught them committing a crime. A lot of law abiding good citizens were caught up in the protests. They weren't crooks and low life's but they were roped into protesting so those mooks could do crime and laugh at the coppers.

This Swedish cookie was on two of my all time favorite shows. Although she is ethnically Swedish in fact she was born and raised in the USA. In fact she played the Mom of one of my all time favorite characters. Who died in the one episode she was on but that was the rule for that show. The woman died in one episode. Every single time.

She also died in one of my favorite Medical shows of the 1970's. But at least she was the center of medical attention. I think she died of a hanging chad.

Of course she is best know for playing second fiddle to a nasty black dude who was the star of the show. So you might not recognize her because she was considerably older then. None the less whose that girl.

Caladium update. This is a rectangular stone planter brought up to a bench to be photographed. This side showing faces outward to full on sun when the sun shows, harsh and direct where I live, and this type of plant does better in shade. So there's a mistake right there and still it does okay. Behind it is a pot situated in a corner filled with morning glory vines that grew ten feet to the top and bent over but their leaves are all spotted because they need more hours of direct sunlight. A reversal of errors there. Between them a fountain made of copper tubing and discs to resemble lotus leaves inside a large pot.

The birds stopped landing here when I began shooting them with rubber bands for pooping all over and tearing up the pace. Plus the guy from India is feeding them. He owns the bottle shop downstairs and has a soft spot for pigeons. There are always crumbs scattered directly outside the store, he's often standing there inside watching them.

He purposefully creates a mess on the sidewalk in front of his business that invites an even greater mess of pigeon poop always right there on his sidewalk, metered street parking for his business.

This is an uninteresting but convoluted entry to two businesses featuring a few architectural alcoves that invite an open shelter to street-people in need of a rest, a place to tuck in, sometimes with sleeping bags. It invites drinkers who collect there, sometimes unable to hold their water or whatever liquid, a place with stains and other evidence of sloppy living, packages, wrappers, litter, clothing, wet patches, vomit, broken bottles, cigarette butts in planters. It could be nice but the place attracts a struggling clientele. Compared to the humanity down on their luck and unable to cope and drinking beyond capacity right there in the same spot the pigeons are lovely by way of contrast crumbs poop and all. And around the corner you'll notice the sidewalk dotted with spit out chewing gum, a ton of black and gray dots, another surface altogether to walk on, a Jackson Pollock sidewalk created by teens waiting in line for tickets to raves, I'm noticing no difference in class regarding sloven street-level disregard.

It is the pot that I drew when they started to show. Since a layer was packed without proper spacing they were expected to grow crowded, and they did.

One thing about living in a largely insect-free zone is there aren't any bees to pollinate plants. There are insects around and I see their damage, but not many of them. There were a lot of little flowers on the vegetable plants but only these three tomatoes and a few other things.

The caladiums did well and saved the project. The order was doubled at the end of their season and those plants are only now poking up through the dirt in patches here and there. They are expected to salvage raggedy pots up to Fall.

The idea of the Patriot King was the brainchild of a thinker well known to our founding fathers—Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), an English politician and journalist at a time when royal power in Britain gave way to government by Parliament and political parties.

Bolingbroke’s political disappointments led him to a second career as a polemicist. In a series of essays and books, he argued that the original sin of English political life was corruption. Party leaders bought elections by bribing voters and bought the loyalty of members of Parliament by giving them government jobs.

Bolingbroke argued that only a public-spirited royal could rise above this dirty traffic. In his most influential book, he named this paragon the Patriot King. High birth would guarantee such a ruler’s independence; he would “put himself at the head of his people in order to govern, or more properly to subdue, all parties.”

The founding fathers didn’t want a king, patriotic or otherwise. But they also didn’t want political parties, which James Madison in the Federalist dismissively called “factions.” When parties inevitably arose, the founders and their heirs quite naturally yearned for some savior who might check them.

For more than two centuries, the most common candidates for the role of Patriot King have been heroic generals. Six have made it to the White House—Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant and Dwight Eisenhower—and in our day, Colin Powell, Wesley Clark and David Petraeus have been mentioned as possible aspirants. (read the whole thing)

"Lemmy, the grizzled perpetual badass who fronts metal icons Motörhead, has seen healthier days. His band was forced to cancel a few shows earlier this year when the nearly 70-year-old rocker was stricken with gastric distress and dehydration, and he now walks with a the aid of a stick because “my legs are fucked.” He also suffers from diabetes, but he’s found an interesting way to combat the illness; instead of his usual Jack Daniels and coke, Lemmy has switched to vodka and orange juice in order to stay healthy."

“I like orange juice better,” he told The Guardian in a recent interview. “So, Coca-Cola can fuck off.”

“And one thing that I keep hearing about Biden is that if he were to declare and say, because age is such a problem for him if he does, I want to be a one-term president. I want to serve for four years, unite Washington. I’ve dealt with the Republicans in Congress all my public life,” [Carl] Bernstein told CNN’s “New Day.”

“He’s looking at it right now. His people believe he may do it. Some say yes, some say no. But the distrust factor with Hillary Clinton, the whole Trump excitement and bubble that will probably burst gives a great opportunity to Biden to capture the imagination of the press, of this race, of Democrats who don’t want to see Hillary Clinton, who are worried about the distrust factor with her,” Bernstein added."

"At a social gathering in Havana yesterday, a Cuban who has a close relative in one of the adjacent buildings told me that residents there had been visited by Cuban security officials, who informed them that they were expected to appear on the street today and to “be enthusiastic” in their slogans, cheers, and applause. Above all, they were expected to overwhelm and, if possible, drown out any anti-American or anti-imperialist shouts. The Cuban said that his relative had waggishly asked whether the anti-imperialist Cubans were now the “new enemy,” since, for many years, he had been expected to publicly condemn the Americans. In any event, all I heard outside the Embassy today were joyful noises, sincere or not."

Dumb little kids such as ourselves regarded earthquakes as fun. We did not understand the cost of damage nor did we care. That was part of the fun. The more damage the more successful the quake. There never was one dramatically damaging. No giant gaps in the earth opening up under foot, or toppled buildings, so, a bit of a disappointment. I recall telling a group of kids my own age at Travis AFB upon returning from overseas that I would miss all the little earthquakes. We never did get a good one. The boy who most earnestly lauded living at Travis and the earthquakes they get all the time there in California. He bragged about their earthquake quality, all the excitement even earlier that same week describing the shaking and tumult and his bragging bummed me out because in a few weeks we will be moving to someplace steady with only the chance for gulf hurricanes and a very rare tornado. I had no idea there would be armadillos, pelicans ibis and vultures, such things as big mouth bass, crawfish, crabbing, lake and gulf fishing and all that well compensated for the loss of earthquakes.

"Lisa Price said she put up the sign to send a message to the neighbor renting the house next door, who put up cameras peering into her backyard and repeatedly complained to the city about her dogs.“He knew we had dogs when he moved in,” she said.The final straw was a $121 ticket in the mail citing her for a “barking dog.”Price said she doesn’t really intend to sell her home, but was driving home a point.“We thought maybe that would help him to back off,” she said."

Irish High Court Justice Aileen Donnelly went as far as to write a 333-page report about why the suspect shouldn’t be extradited. One highlight from the court’s ruling was that incarceration at ADX Florence prison would amount to “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Donnelly said the prison “amounts to a breach of the constitutional requirement to protect persons from inhuman and degrading treatment and to respect the dignity of the human being.”

“[P]rolonged exposure to involuntary solitary confinement exacts a significant physiological toll, is damaging to the integrity of the mind and personality, and is damaging to the bodily integrity of the person,” she continued. (read more)

For his birthday, a colorblind man receives a pair of glasses that corrects for color blindness. He walks around the office surprised at the old things he sees a new way. He discerns the difference between pink and green for the first time, he sees purple distinct from other colors. Bless. He goes outside and becomes overwhelmed with all he has missed the whole time finally accessing what everyone else already knew. It's too much.

At two of the most cynical sites, b3ta and YouTube, among the many comments nobody says, "fake!"

Instead, and surprisingly the comments are all tender-hearted and compassionate and this is out of character for both places. Surely somebody doubts. But nobody there does. One person asks amusingly what happens when you put them on your dog.

Are there really glasses that correct for colorblindness? This is the twenty-first century, after all, and we take these advances for granted. Turns out, there are. And they're only $400.00

Advertisement More of the same except different people seeing color spectrum for the first time and giving their impressions. One man looking through his own child's crayon drawings is sweet. He'd see his son constantly going for crayons and not appreciating the purposefulness behind his boy's choices. Touching seeing him realize it.

The project is a collaboration with a paint company, valspar color for all is another site providing a place for people to describe their experiences and provide their testimonials in comment and video form.

Donald Trump can reach 50% in the next poll if he follows through on his latest threat. He is all over the place mocking Bernie Sanders for getting chased off the stage at his own rally by a couple of knuckleheads from the "Black Lives Matter" racket. Trump said he would have fought with them and had them thrown off the stage. In return the Mike Brown fans vow to bust up Trumps next rally. This could get interesting.

If Trump has them arrested if they crash his rally I bet he could reach 50% in the Republican primary. It would be a spectacular violation of the norms of political correctness. The mainstream medias heads would explode. Megyn Kelly would bleed out of every orifice. As would Chris Matthews.

Clinton has not said why she requested the book, but it includes some advice that is particularly interesting in light of the controversy over her unconventional email arrangement at the State Department and her decision to delete tens of thousands of emails she deemed to be purely personal.

Take, for example, Chapter Six: “The Email That Can Land You In Jail.” The chapter includes a section entitled “How to Delete Something So It Stays Deleted.”

“Some people are hoarders, some are checkers,” the authors write. “The main thing to consider is that once you do decide to delete, it’s like taking the garbage from your kitchen and putting it in your hallway. It’s still there.”

The chapter advised that to truly delete emails may require a special rewriting program “to make sure that it’s not just elsewhere on the drive but has in fact been written over sixteen or twenty times and rendered undefinable.”

"Being left-handed means feeling like you’re doing everything backwards. Measuring tapes, scissors, pens attached to desks at the bank, cameras, some power tools, can openers and school desks all prove to be far more challenging for those of who lead with their left hand. Lefties know you need to get to classes early enough to score a left-handed desk to avoid Twister-like contortions of using the others. The desk was only the start of school woes: don’t forget about impossible-to-use binders, coiled notebooks that leave indentations as you write, and a hand smeared with ink at the end of the day. If you’re a lefty, Aug. 13 is your special day to bond with your fellow southpaws. A few notable reasons to celebrate International Left-Handedness Day: Great nicknames like southpaw, cack-handed and gibble-fisted. On a QWERTY keyboard there are 1447 English words typed solely with the left hand — only 187 are typed with the right hand alone. Also, you’re in pretty good company - notable lefties include Paul McCartney, Tom Cruise, Prince William, Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci and Mark Twain."

Overall, 32 reports examining the association between doctors’ sex and medico-legal action were included in the systematic review (n=4,054,551), of which 27 found that male doctors were more likely to have experienced medico-legal action. 19 reports were included in the meta-analysis (n=3,794,486, including 20,666 cases). Results showed male doctors had nearly two and a half times the odds of being subject to medico-legal action than female doctors. Heterogeneity was present in all meta-analyses.

Conclusion: Male doctors are more likely to have had experienced medico-legal actions compared to female doctors. This finding is robust internationally, across outcomes of varying severity, and over time.

He did not go into detail on precisely how much money he reckons Washington owes Havana. The Americans are also claiming compensation for US-owned property, such as real estate, that was confiscated when Castro took power.

Castro made no mention either of Kerry's visit to reopen the embassy...

Over the years, Fidel Castro has been a frequent contributor of essays to the communist party newspaper Granma and other media. Thursday's was his first piece since May 8.

"Writing is a way to be useful, if you keep in mind that we poor humans must be more and better educated in the face of the incredible ignorance that surrounds us all, except for researchers who use science to seek a satisfactory answer," Castro wrote.

“Well, maybe I’m not objective when it comes to Planned Parenthood. But you know, I know who Margaret Sanger is, and I know that she believed in eugenics, and that she was not particularly enamored with black people,” Carson said. “And one of the reasons that you find most of their clinics in black neighborhoods is so that you can find way to control that population. And I think people should go back and read about Margaret Sanger, who founded this place — a woman who Hillary Clinton by the say says she admires. Look and see what many people in Nazi Germany thought about her.”

If the tax payers are funding PP, shouldn't we have numbers breaking down who is getting abortions along racial lines. The government loves those numbers for just about everything else they are involved in, from jobs to housing. How many blacks are our tax dollars helping get killed?

There are a couple of them, flat-headed statues depicting blindfolded justice, but the statues stop at the brow. Justice is not supposed to be mindless. They didn't think this through. The idea is off. Finally, unsatisfactory. Like there wasn't enough marble. There is no getting used to them.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Happened to catch this portion of Pitch Perfect today and I thought, "that's rather good." I like the weirdness of it. They're playing the singing group The Treble Makers.

12 million views on YouTube, plus other uploads also with millions of views. Reading through a few comments it's clear the girls are nuts for one of the performers. All of them, actually, but one particularly. The premise of the film is competing a cappella groups a bit like softened Jets vs Sharks, girls vs guys climaxing with this final championship. I gathered all this by watching this video, the riff off, by skipping through six or so three second views. I notice some of the videos remove audio sections, or double the video with only half the audio to fake out match up programs for copyright claims that would limit activity. I tested this elsewhere and it worked.

And the silence is deafening.Syllogism: 1) Were right-wing radicals 1/1000 the fierce reactionaries that they're made out to be then there wouldn't be a single Planned Parenthood building left standing in the United States. 2) Planned Parenthood buildings are still standing and their operation continues. 3) Conclusion: right wing radicals are not 1/1000 what they are made out to be.

David Daleiden, the head of The Center for Medical Progress, which has released all of the expose’ videos, told LifeNews: “Experiences like Holly O’Donnell’s show that Planned Parenthood’s abortion and baby parts business is not a safe place where vulnerable women can be cared for, but a harvesting ground for saleable human ‘product.’ Taxpayer subsidies to Planned Parenthood’s barbaric abortion business should be revoked immediately, and law enforcement and other elected officials must act decisively to determine the full extent of Planned Parenthood’s offensive practices and hold them accountable to the law.”

"The video released today shows someone who has never worked for Planned Parenthood making false and outrageous claims, without any evidence to back them up," said Eric Ferrero, Vice President of Communication, Planned Parenthood Federation of America in a statement out Wednesday. "Planned Parenthood follows all laws -- period. This latest video is part of a fraud intended to deceive the public and advance an extreme political agenda, and nothing on this video substantiates false claims from anti-abortion activists."

And,

"We coordinate with clinics and hospitals to obtain human tissue and blood -- specimens that would be otherwise be disposed of -- and provide them to biotechnology and academic institutions performing research to find a cure," said Beau Phillips, spokesman for the group. "The nation's and the world's greatest research facilities need a reliable source of healthy human-derived blood, tissue and cellular specimens to perform their studies. As a point of clarification, StemExpress has never requested nor received an intact fetus."

Unlike past CMP videos that have made allegations of illegal activity on the part of Planned Parenthood, this latest video instead focuses on O’Donnell’s personal discomfort in being around abortions and abortion patients. While she alleges that she witnessed fetal tissue specimens being collected for StemExpress without patient consent, she offers few specifics or hard proof.

Furthermore, she notes towards the video’s end that if an emotional patient ever asked her if she herself believed that the woman should have an abortion, O’Donnell would tell them to “run.”

It is an odd next installment in the on-going series of attacks by the CMP on Planned Parenthood — a video less about alleged scandal, but rather a more “traditional” antiabortionist appeal to protect the so-called “unborn.”

Their tingly spider senses clue them to coordinated effort.

More so than ever, the CMP videos seem to be a clearly orchestrated effort in coordination with GOP leadership to make abortion — and the defunding of Planned Parenthood of federal grants that support family planning and preventative health services — a prolonged and critical election-season topic.

This occurred in an industrial northern port city, Tianjin Tanggu. The first brief clip of the explosion does not look survivable, as if the phone was picked up from the ground in the aftermath. It's that close. Other recordings at distances look like an attack on the city. Google videos: [explosion, tianjin tanggu]

Signing off with thanks to all who have participated in our discussions of fiction writing today. I want to leave you with this thought: I think we are facing a new era of censorship, in the name of political correctness. There are forces at work in the book world that want to control fiction writing in terms of who "has a right" to write about what. Some even advocate the out and out censorship of older works using words we now deem wholly unacceptable. Some are critical of novels involving rape. Some argue that white novelists have no right to write about people of color; and Christians should not write novels involving Jews or topics involving Jews. I think all this is dangerous. I think we have to stand up for the freedom of fiction writers to write what they want to write, no matter how offensive it might be to some one else. We must stand up for fiction as a place where transgressive behavior and ideas can be explored. We must stand up for freedom in the arts. I think we have to be willing to stand up for the despised. It is always a matter of personal choice whether one buys or reads a book. No one can make you do it. But internet campaigns to destroy authors accused of inappropriate subject matter or attitudes are dangerous to us all. That's my take on it. Ignore what you find offensive. Or talk about it in a substantive way. But don't set out to censor it, or destroy the career of the offending author. Comments welcome. I will see you tomorrow.

“We will follow the facts wherever they lead, to include former aides and associates, as appropriate,” said Douglas Welty, a spokesman for the State Department’s inspector general.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wants Clinton and her aides to “come clean and cough up” information about their personal email use.

“Both the State Department and Intelligence Community inspectors general should be looking into the staff use of the Clinton private server for official State Department business. This means giving both inspectors general access and custody of all emails that haven’t already been deleted,” said Grassley of Iowa. “From what is publicly known, it appears that the investigation thus far has focused so much on the former secretary of state, that it’s gotten lost that high-level staff apparently also used this server too.”

Clinton, now the Democratic presidential front-runner, "directed her team to give her email server that was used during her tenure as (Secretary of State) to the Department of Justice, as well as a thumb drive containing copies of her emails already provided to the State Department," her spokesman, Nick Merrill, told CNN early Tuesday evening. "She pledged to cooperate with the government's security inquiry, and if there are more questions, we will continue to address them."

"It’s past time to pull it down... That damned flag: it’s a shroud. It smothers the complexity, the reality, of what really happened in Vietnam. We’ve come to our senses about that other banner of lies."

The argument was crystallized in an April dismissal motion filed by lawyers for Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, saying the conduct alleged by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara amounted to “not actual federal crimes but rather longstanding features of New York state government that the U.S. Attorney finds distasteful.”... “That’s the way the system is supposed to operate,” Mr. DerOhannesian said.

Prosecutors have dismissed arguments that their criminal allegations describe acceptable government work. In response to Mr. Silver’s attorneys describing the charges as merely features of his job, Manhattan federal prosecutors wrote that that would mean New York had “legalized the kind of quid-pro-quo bribery” at the core of federal anticorruption laws.

Harris, 18, remained in critical condition Monday. Police charged him with 10 counts of assaulting law enforcement, shooting at a motor vehicle and armed criminal action...

St. Louis Alderman Antonio French, who was just a few feet away when the night’s first round of gunfire broke out, said he ran toward the office of a nonprofit group he founded called Heal STL. There he saw a young man who looked equally horrified by the shooting, so French invited him in.

Moments later, as French turned his back, the boy dashed out the door with six of the nonprofit’s iPads, a laptop and a camera bag.

“For a small group of people, the anniversary of Michael Brown’s death might as well have been Looting Day,” French said.

The suspect yelled, shook the leaf-blower, and revved its engine to create a loud and disturbing noise... “You’re literally thinking (about) “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” like there’s crazy people out there,” one injured movie-goer said. “You’re in a theater, and you think you’re going to die.”

“People started screaming, and everybody got up and started running, like fight-or-flight, and some lady pushed me and I fell on the ground, and like seven or eight people trampled over my leg, and over my head.”

Monday, August 10, 2015

An early physics pioneer you rarely hear about is Henry Moseley, who died 100 years ago today. Moseley made an important discovery now called "Moseley's Law."

Up until Moseley's time, chemical elements in the iconic Periodic Table
were arranged according to weight. There was other rhyme and reason to the
arrangement of elements in the Table, but no true understanding of their masses
beyond: things get heavier. There was hope that atomic mass would reveal
something fundamental about physics, and the 1914 Nobel Prize went to Harvard's T. W.
Richards for his careful and methodical measurements of atomic weights.

Moseley showed that by shining X-rays onto atomic samples, he got a distinct integer value for each element which he called Z. Others before Moseley -- namely Bunsen and Kirchoff -- had shown how unseen atoms could be "seen" and identified by burning them in flames, but Moseley's experiments were beautifully simple and related all elements together with their Z-values instead of getting a unique "fingerprint" for each. Moseley's law is still used to identify elements in deep space.

Exactly what Z was had only been postulated a few years earlier. Niels Bohr had shown that Z was the nuclear charge (1 for the hydrogen atom) and Ernest Rutherford had suggested that Z for heavy atoms might be about half an element's atomic weight. A Dutchman, Antonius van den Broek had suggested that Z was an element's "atomic number" and Moseley proved it.

Good ideas need good proof to be good science.

The Periodic Table was never the same after Moseley.

Henry Moseley probably should have gotten the 1915 or 1916 Nobel Prize in Physics, but he was killed by a Turkish bullet at Gallipoli at age 27.

“Our main argument is that veterans know Iran better than Washington, D.C., does. You’ve got a lot of veterans out there who are pretty upset about this, so we are looking to capture their voices and make sure they are heard.” Michael Pregent - former intelligence adviser to Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno who served in Iraq.

Described this way upon her hire, by an unnamed senior official who elaborates "she is a team player in every sense." Her present job, for now, is special assistant to the President and House legislative affairs liaison, and not just regular assistant.

Barvetta managed her rage with suspicion of two-timing boyfriend by even-keeling his team player official service revolver and used it to shoot at him after demanding he reveal the call history of his cell phone. She took the phone and the gun and ran inside the house leaving boyfriend outside pleading for his weapon. She demanded his passwords. He refused. She shot at him.

“You had to live in New York in the ’50s and ’60s to truly understand what a gigantic figure Frank Gifford was,” Michaels said in a tribute during halftime of the Hall of Fame game Sunday night (watch it here). “He was right there with Mickey Mantle.”

“I’ll forever remember Frank as a man who, no matter what was going on around him, was always the coolest guy in the room.”

Gifford made the job look effortless.

“So many of us, especially in these high-pressure, high-profile businesses, there’s a tendency to have these knee-jerk responses to things,” Michaels told Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times. “That was never Frank. Frank was always the guy who would assess it. He would do it quietly. Then he would very often have something on the back end, when everything had calmed down, that was well thought out.

This is the parody North Korea Twitter account run by one of the Pope Hat contributors that tweets amusing statements presumably from official NK government source but obviously too ridiculous to be true. It's amusing because NK releases really do sound like that, but this takes things just a bit too far. One recent topic is Trump. Now that is funny right there, North Korea chiming in about Trump when the only thing they could say in real life would already be ridiculous so the aim now is to out-ridiculous the ridiculous North Koreans. A few samples:

Hilarious. It's impish. This is a lawyer goofing around. Doing this instead of real work, for fun, to jack with people, he loves it when people are tripped up and that becomes a new story. It reminds me of crossword constructor Dave Tuller, once you understand his type of trickster efforts then his puzzles become solvable, otherwise he is too outrageous to follow. I'm glad I found this photo because these three constructors at the top are outstanding puzzle constructors, top of their field, and respected among other constructors. They all sit at the cool kid's table at tournament, one that looks a bit nerdy.

Morning Joe chomped on the Trump entry like a hungry fish. You would have to watch the show to notice Mark Halperin begin a discussion by citing this parody account.

Now you know, if you don't already Mark Halperin is too eager to ingest, too gluttonous, too rapacious for goodies of political nature he'll take anything in that tastes good. Scoop it in. Even from North Korea. His enthusiasm is over the top. Psychologically unhealthy. He must be mocked and mercilessly. Ridicule is his only brake.

"To quote Shia LaBeouf, just do it... Seriously though, something I've learned over time is that when you have something you need to do, there's a moment where you're like "man, I need to do that," but think: "I'll just do it later when I'm in the mood." So far as I know, that mood never comes. So the moment you think "man, I need to do that," is the moment you have to do it. It isn't easy, but it's the only way to get it done. Plus you'll feel good afterwards."

Something I read on Reddit once that stuck with me -- if you don't feel like doing something, do it for 5 minutes. You'll get sucked in, get the job done, and move on with your life. It works wonders with laundry!

Right. I'm on it, now. I'll report back when I'm done.

December 18, 2005. I felt like making my apartment a cleaner place. Nobody was arriving soon for tea parties, nobody was inspecting. I just had an itch I could scratch in no other way.The itch will return someday, it promised.

The email grab -- first codenamed "Dancing Panda" by U.S. officials, and then "Legion Amethyst" -- was detected in April 2010, according to a top secret NSA briefing from 2014. The intrusion into personal emails was still active at the time of the briefing and, according to the senior official, is still going on.

The government email accounts assigned to the officials, however, were not hacked because they are more secure, says the senior U.S. intelligence official.

The time period overlaps with Hillary Clinton's use of a private email account while Secretary of State from Jan. 21, 2009 to Feb. 1, 2013. The names and ranks of the officials whose emails were actually grabbed, however, were not disclosed in the NSA briefing nor by the intelligence official.

Speaking to reporters at a predawn news conference on Monday, Belmar estimated that more than 40 rounds had been unleashed in what he called "a remarkable amount of gunfire."

"These were criminals; they weren't protesters," he said of the shooters. "There is a small group of people out there that are intent on making sure that we don't have peace that prevails."

At least three officers were injured in the melee, one struck in the face with a brick hurled from the crowd and two others pepper-sprayed by protesters, Belmar said.

A member of the local news media was also robbed and assaulted in a nearby parking lot amid Sunday night's turmoil, during which police reported making five arrests.

Separately, two teenage males were shot early on Monday in a drive-by attack near a sidewalk shrine erected in Brown's memory beside the spot where he was killed, but their wounds were not considered life-threatening, police said...

The scene changed dramatically after dark. Dozens of protesters converged on West Florissant Avenue, which bore the brunt of last summer's rioting, and chanted: "Shut it down" in the midst of a severe thunderstorm.

A phalanx of helmeted police wearing body armor and carrying shields moved in. Protesters briefly fell away before regrouping to confront the line of officers, who ordered them to disperse.

The protesters, locking arms and edging closer to the police cordon, began throwing water bottles and shouting: "We are ready for war!" Both sides held their ground while clergy members and activists appealed for calm.

Bursts of gunfire shattered the face-off, sending police crouching behind their patrol cars and demonstrators scurrying for cover. Helicopters whirred overhead as additional police armed with assault rifles swarmed the area, some roaring down the street in armored vehicles in the direction of the gunfire.

Merchants, some armed, stood guard outside their businesses early Monday after the disturbances, which unfolded around the corner from where Brown was gunned down on Aug. 9, 2014, by officer Darren Wilson.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

The marksman saved the terrified eight-year old and his father by shooting a jihadi with a head shot from 1,000 meters.

That's far. A meter is a yard so 1,000 yards. 10 football fields. Except wait. I's not exactly a yard. That many yards makes a significant difference. Turns out, 1,000 meters is actually 1093 yards. Nearly 100 more yards, the sniper shot nearly eleven football fields worth, and that's American football fields. Not counting end zones. Fields for their football games are a little longer. However visualized it is an outstanding shot.

It must have seemed like an act of God. There was a crowd assembled to witness. The jihadist appeared crazed and with two henchmen on each side. The sniper took out all three with three consecutive shots from a .50 caliber sniper rifle. That's large. Fitted with a silencer.

The big one on the left. You can visualize the jihadi's head turning to red mist right before the stunned group of witnesses, the jihadists were making a point, the father and son had refused to deny their faith, and just as the executioner lifted his knife to slice the throat of the father his own head pops to red mist and and his body crumples. The prisoners still blindfolded and terrified have no idea what is happening, they had already been pushed down and kicked, and the two henchmen look at each other straining to process what had just happened one of their heads pops to red mist and his body crumples and the next moment the third. Someone stepped forward and untied the prisoners.

Father and son stare at the dead men fallen around them and then take off running. Last seen headed for Turkey. Town rejoices. ISIS no longer enters the town. In their world view, by their own prayer, Allah definitely not willing.

Great read. The story bears on an earlier post here at comonocreerendios about the use of the word "hero." The writer is enthralled with the report and judging by your comments back there you will will find the article diminished by that. It is an outstanding feat, and the whole time I'm thinking the sniper himself regarding it pretty much in a day's work if a bit unusual for its particular drama.

One of them is really easy. Well they were all easy because they were starlets in the 1970's. And they came to the Battle of the Network Stars. Plus they all had sex with both Donald Trunp and Bruce Jenner. Allegedly.

"I am Howard Cosell speaking of Sports. I am here at the Battle of the Network stars speaking with the luscious Suzzane Somers and the virile Bruce Jenner."
"Oh Howard you are so cute. I want to take off your toupee and lick your bald Jewish head."
"Thank you Suzzane maybe later. So Bruce what do you think of Suzzane. Wouldn't you like to do her?"
"Do her? I want to be her!"
"WHAT?"
"Oh sorry. It's 1977. I am 38 years too early for this. Nevermind."

This is the face of the grass roots of the Republican party. An old angry white man. The grass roots are tired of being lied to by the Rhinos and the establishment Republicans. Tired of failure theater. Tired of voting to give the Republicans the majority in both Houses of Congress and being told that their hands are tied. That they can't appeal Obamacare. That they can't defund Planned Parenthood baby chop shops. That they can't stop the Iran deal that will give the bomb to our mortal enemies while we sell Israel down the river. That we can't get to the bottom of Benghazi, Hillary's emails or the IRS. That we can't stop Obama's usurpation of Congresses role in government with his refusal to enforce the existing law. Failure theater is so ingrained that they rigged it so that they can give Obama the Iran deal even if they vote against it when they are in the majority. Instead of forcing Obama to get the Super Majority they turned the process upside down into a rigged vote where they had to get the two thirds vote. They want our votes but then they don't do anything with them. Except feather their nests and get reelected.

So even an idiot plutocrat with a big mouth seem better. He is a New Yorker. The grass roots hates big mouth North Easterners who are blow hards and phonies. Except that even that is not as bad as another blow dried liar who talks Reagan and votes McGovern. So they are willing to blow it up. Elect-ability is a bunch of tired bullshit. Elect-ability got us McCain and Romney and more of the same. Appealing to the Democratic voting blocks is not the answer. They will never vote for a Republican. Ever. So it is a fools errand to drop your principles to appeal to someone who will never vote for you. We have seen this time and again. There are more than enough unmotivated people who don't vote who are in the natural base of the Republican party to win an Electoral college victory. You just need to target them. You don't have to be the President of all the people. Obama has proven that. Don't ignore the lesson of history that is right before our eyes.

Trump will not win the nomination. He will not be the candidate. But the candidate has to pick up some of what Trump is doing. He has to stop with the political correctness. He has to take the fight to the Democrats. He has to play dirty in the same way that the Democrats and the media does or it is all over before it even begins. Is Walker too wimpy? Is Rubio too juvenile? Is Cruz too scary?
Is Bush too bushy? Who is going to take it to the other side with enough piss and vinegar to get the job done?

This is the face of the grass roots of the Democratic party. A tired old white man who is a socialist who wants to redistribute the wealth of the nation to the people who are yelling at him for more stuff. He wants to give it all but it is not quite enough. It will never be enough. The words will always be wrong. The actions always inadequate. He will be racist and sexist and homophobic and hetero-normative and throw out trigger warnings to all and sundry. They are screaming and abusing him but he will dig in and try to find a way to take enough out of society to transfer it to others based on their insatiable demands. If elected he will continue to offer more stuff. More money for abortions. More student loans down a rathole for bogus degrees in womans studies or some other made up major. Big cuts in defense because Russia and China and Iran are our friends. More regulations to stop the production of domestic energy because we need to change over to solar and wind and magical unicorn power. More regulations to end manufacturing and industry because global warming will be a terrible problem in a hundred million years from now so you should give up your car to ride a bike and get run down by an illegal immigrant in a stolen car who doesn't have a license. And you have to like it. Or you are racist, sexist, homophobic and would kill a lion with a bow and arrow. Now it is time to socially engineer your hometown so it will have the proper demographic breakdown. The federal government is going to judge you and import enough thugs, thieves, deviants and lowlifes so you meet the officially approved mixture that the pointy headed professors and activists have decreed must be the only way that you can live. Just don't try to shop at a CVS, They will all be burned down and looted. Sell your CVS stock now. Get ahead of the curve.

That is what Bernie will bring you. He is the face of the Democratic Party.

He added: “Obviously the relationship between the US and Israel is deep. It is profound. It is reflected in my policies. But as I said in the speech yesterday on the substance, the prime minister is wrong on this.

“I can show that basic assumptions he has made are incorrect. If in fact my argument is right, that this is the best way for Iran not to get a nuclear weapon, that is not just good for the United States, that is very good for Israel.”

Does that mean that if the US where faced with a substantial threat, like Israel faces with Iran, Obama would not do all he could to neutralize that threat? No wander ISIS is still alive.

"Dr MacCarthy survived the war and spent the rest of his life in London. He died in 1995. His autobiography A Doctor’s War was published in 1979. He is now the subject of an documentary entitled A Doctor’s Sword. Extract from A Doctor’s War by Dr Aidan MacCarthy:"

On August 9th the day started bright and clear with only occasional clouds to the north. During a 10-minute break in our clearing work, round about 10.45am, some of our men had gone back to the camp which was close by, to get a drink of water or a cigarette.

High above us we saw eight vapour trails showing two separate four engine bombers, heading south. These were B-29 bombers, or B-NEE-JU-KU’s as the Japanese called them. They had been seen going north earlier that morning. Then they suddenly altered course and came back over Nagasaki. This manoeuvre was enough to send us wildly dashing for the air-raid shelters. To dig our own graves with a view to being shot by the Japanese was one thing, but to be killed by our own allies was far too galling.

In the shelters we prayed that there would not be a direct hit. A couple of POWs did not bother to go into the shelters, staying on the surface and crouching on the ground in the shadow of the barrack huts.

They were gazing at the sky, watching the approaching vapour trails. One of them shouted to us that three small parachutes had dropped.

There then followed a blue flash, accompanied by a very bright magnesium-type flare which blinded them. Then came a frighteningly loud but rather flat explosion which was followed by a blast of hot air.

Some of this could be felt even by us as it came through the shelter openings, which were very rarely closed owing to the poor ventilation. The explosions we heard seemed to be two in number and this puzzled experts when later we were being debriefed.

One possible explanation is that the second sound was a giant echo from the surrounding hills. All this was followed by eerie silence. Then an Australian POW stuck his head out of the shelter opening, looked around and ducked back in, his face expressing incredulity. This brought the rest of us scrambling to our feet and a panic rush to the exits. The sight that greeted us halted us in our tracks.

As we slowly surveyed the scene around us, we became aware that the camp had to all intents and purposes disappeared. Mostly of wooden construction, the wood had carbonized and turned to ashes.

Bodies lay everywhere, some horribly mutilated by falling walls, girders and flying glass. There were outbreaks of fire in all directions, with loud explosions recurring as the flapping, live electric cables fused and flared.

The gas mains had also exploded, and those people still on their feet ran round in circles, hands pressed to their blinded eyes or holding the flesh that hung in tatters from their faces or arms.

The brick built guardroom had collapsed, and the dead guards lay almost naked. We could suddenly see right up the length of the valley, where previously the factories and buildings had formed a screen. Left behind was a crazy forest of discoloured corrugated sheets clinging to twisted girders.

Burst waterpipes shot fountains of water high in the air. The steel girders stood like stark sentinels, leaning over a series of concrete ‘tennis courts’ that had once been the floors of factories.

But most frightening of all was the lack of sunlight in contrast to the bright August sunshine that we had left a few minutes earlier, there was now a kind of twilight. We all genuinely thought, for some time, that this was the end of the world.

As I dashed through the shelter opening and scrambled onto the surface, my predominant thought was to get away as far and as fast as possible. I turned and ran. Others followed. The sea seemed to offer the most immediate prospect of safety, but as we ran towards it, we encountered another mob running towards us.

Everyone seemed to be looking for an intact bridge across the Urakami river. We were on the south side and to make our way to the sea and hills we needed to cross to the north bank. Unfortunately no bridge seemed to be available so I jumped into the cloudy waters and swam. Unwillingly the rest of the group joined me in the water.

On the opposite bank we stuck in the black glue-like mud and discovered that struggling only made matters worse. Eventually, muddy, smelly and exhausted, we got clear of the river and headed for the foothills to the north of the valley.

En route we were physically sickened by an endless stream of burnt, bleeding, flesh-torn, stumbling people, many unable to rise from where they had fallen. Others were still trapped under fallen debris. Occasionally someone had gone beserk.

The whole atmosphere was permeated with blind terror, and the macabre twilight was illuminated by numerous fires, the crackle of which mixed with the screams of the dying and injured. These sounded even more horrific because of the eerie overall ‘silence’.

Thousands of people scrambled, pushed, shoved and crawled across the shattered landscape in a crazed attempt to seek safety. At last we reached the foothills and the locals seemed quite pleased to see us, particularly when they discovered I was a doctor.

Immediately I set to work. Burns were the main problem and these were of two types – fire burns and flash burns. The locals used some native fern-like leaves to ease the pain-and this seemed to work. I was able to help by splinting and tying up broken bones.

Later that day the authorities began to set up first aid posts in caves which had been dug in the hillsides as air-raid shelters. Word soon spread amongst the wounded and injured and many were carried off on makeshift stretchers to these ‘hospital’ caves. Meanwhile, it began to rain. This helped to quell some of the fires.

The rain was black – which frightened everybody, including the Japanese. Not knowing until later anything at all about the effects of an atomic explosion, I seriously wondered whether we had finally arrived at Judgement Day.

An angry God was devastating the Japanese for their sins – and mistakenly including us in the holocaust.